At some point in your favorite movie or TV show, one of the characters decides to make a smoothie, using all the usual ingredients. Into the blender goes blueberries, fruit juice, a banana, sausage? A chocolate bar with the wrapper on? A pen?

This trope occurs when unusual ingredients, often including some non-food items, are added to a blender. May occur after a character promises a "special shake", or some similar description. Often, the more typical items are added first, while the more "unconventional" items are saved for later.

Examples

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Advertising

An American company (JML Power Blitzers) manufacturing kitchen blenders does this to demonstrate exactly how tough its products are. Unlikely items up to and including a whole laptop computer have been ground to powder in the promotional videos.

Happens in the Touhou spinoff manga Inaba of the Moon and Inaba of the Earth. Kaguya is trying to lose weight, so Eirin mentions several different diets - the Banana Diet, the Yogurt Diet and the Natto Diet. Cue Tewi fixing up a Banana Yogurt Natto Smoothie.

Comic Books

In one Archie Comics story, a baby food company discontinues its Pizza flavored brand, which is too bad because little Jellybean Jones loves the stuff. Jughead tries to make his own kind by sticking whole pizza slices into the blender and setting it to 'puree'. After several false starts he calls the company and ask for their recipe. It turns out that the secret ingredient is anchovies, which is why it was discontinued- aside from Jellybean, nobody else liked it.

Fan Works

Howl-oween, the first in the Halloween Horrors collaborative series between Ellen Brand and Jeremy Ray Logsdon, mentions that Billy Cranston enjoys spinach smoothies.

In the second The Naked Gun movie, Jane makes such a shake while talking to Frank.

The 1987 teen comedy My Best Friend is a Vampire (starring Robert Sean Leonard in one of his earliest film roles), the hero is undergoing a slow transformation into a vampire. At one point, hungry but not knowing for what, he makes a smoothie out of a slab of raw liver (including the blood that had leaked into the bottom of the package).

Joe: That's mainly whipped liver...I put a little whey in it, then mix it with a little alfalfa sprouts, and some bean curd and spinach...It's a liver and whey shake.

Subverted in Stone Cold, where the protagonist makes a smoothie out of all sorts of odd ingredients (vegetables, raw meat, leftover pizza, candy bars, etc.), but it turns out to just be food for his pet iguana. The lizard doesn't seem to want it, either.

In the movie Bewitched, Uncle Arthur throws random ingredients into a blender while lecturing Jack. When Jack takes a sip and remarks on the awful taste, Arthur admits that it's not for drinking - he just loves to blend.

Jericho Kane (Ahnuld) in End of Days makes a smoothie that includes old takeaway food and beer.

CSI has an episode where Someone makes such a shake using human organs.

On a Kenan & Kel episode, the title duo managed to stumble upon a cure for the Common Cold by just throwing stuff like chicken, eggs, sardines, and, of course, orange soda. Unfortunately, neither one of them can remember the exact ingredients when Chris and Roger ask for some for their own colds, and they end up make a completely different smoothie that immediately puts people to sleep.

Pictured above: in the Monk episode "Mr. Monk Is On The Run, Part 1", Monk is on the lam, and seeks refuge in Natalie's house. Natalie needs a cordless drill to remove the shackles on Monk's jumpsuit. But Randy happens to be there, also looking for Monk. To distract Randy, Natalie claims that her blender broke. She then puts a bunch of random, and very questionable ingredients into a pitcher, then uses the drill to ground them all together. This results in a very disgusting looking material in the pitcher, from which Natalie takes a sip:

Lt. Randy Disher: Is that oil?

Natalie Teeger: That is oil. It's uh, it's from the ground so it's organic, and it just... lubricates your organs. [puts down the glass and picks up the drill] Um, I'll just be washing up. I'll be right back. You can have it.

Made better by the fact that Randy tries a sip and seems to find it acceptable. The whole time, though, his face is like "Natalie, what the hell is wrong with you?"

Sheldon Cooper's experiments with unorthodox smoothies in The Big Bang Theory have included mango-and moth and caterpillars. his intention is to see if Leonard notices. Sheldon has no intention of drinking the smoothies himself....

The BBC radio panel game The 99p Challenge had a round based on coming up with these- suggestions included Bill Bailey's concoction of Praline and Seagull's Tears.

Video Game

The video game Dead Rising allows players to combine any two foodstuffs (including all juices, meats, vegetables, fruits, breads, frozen foods, rotten foods, etc.) in blenders around the shopping mall and turn them into smoothies that grant the player with limited power-ups, abilities, etc.

The Sims 2's Seasons expansion includes a smoothie maker that sims can use to turn the produce of their gardens into various juice blends or smoothies, which, depending on the quality of the produce involved can provide nifty beneficial effects (tomato soup warms the drinker, strawberry lemonade puts them into Platinum Aspiration, etc.). One can also make "pureed boot" from the boots caught while fishing, which causes sims to spaz out in various animations for a few seconds.

The Strong Bad Emailalternate universe has a variation: Strong Bad uses a Game Boy in a blender to create an alternate universe portal, which he uses to visit all his different dimension doppelgangers. Then Homestar Runner gets his hands on the blender and tries to make a "real fruit smoothie" with it, which causes Strong Bad (and his alternate universe equivalents) to transport randomly between dimensions.

The Simpsons has an episode where Homer gets his stomach stapled, he can only eat the smallest amounts of solid food after the surgery, and he has to puree it in a blender and drink it down. We see him do this with the tip of a slice of pizza, cut with a knife and fork.

When Beezy gets a butler in Jimmy Two-Shoes he becomes too lazy to chew, making his butler mix his sandwiches in a blender (with the plate it was on).

An episode of Ben 10: Alien Force had Ben almost obsessively drinking smoothies. When Gwen asks him how many he's had, he tells her "Enough to know that chocolate and carrot are two great tastes that don't go great together.

Real Life: Monkey House Rocket Fuel is a smoothie for college students who need to cram for all-nighters: Use caffeinated water to brew coffee, then brew another pot of coffee with the coffee. Then add to caffeinated ice cream such as Ben & Jerry's "Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz Buzz", Penguin Mints, chocolate syrup, and add 1 cup of sugar, then blend. Washing down a fistful of caffeine tablets with a glass of chocolate milkshake or something might be equally effective and a lot less labourious, but nowhere near as tasty.

Athletes, gym bunnies and other exercise enthusiasts may drink smoothies regularly for various reasons and some of the 'home brews' may seem downright horrific to the uninitiated, particularly those made by amateur bodybuilders. Raw eggs and oatmeal often go into the blender if the drinker can't afford an expensive protein powder.

Tuna shakes are notably popular in weightlifting forums.

British milkshake chain Shakeaway offer a "Wicked Wendy" milkshake, consisting of licorice allsorts, beetroot, and custard. They advertise it as "The world's worst milkshake".

They've got competition - or they used to. A couple of years ago, Japanese fast food chain Lotteria was unwise enough to run an online promotion where people could send in and vote on ideas for their next milkshake flavour. Thanks to the lovable trolls of 2ch, the winning flavour was kimchi.

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